by Raye Morgan
And then they arrived. Cam brought the car to a stop in a cloud of dust and they both sat there, staring out at the open area. For a moment or two, neither said a word.
Finally Diana asked pitifully, “Are you sure this is it?”
“Afraid so,” he said.
She turned to gaze at him, a look of irony in her eyes. “I don’t think there could be an uglier patch of land in all the Sierras, do you?”
“It’s definitely an ugly little spud,” he said out of the side of his mouth, shaking his head. “I don’t think anyone is going to want to build here. There are no trees, no view, no nothing.”
“No paved road,” she pointed out, wincing as she looked back at all the rocks and gullies they were going to have to go back through. “Looks like the best thing to do would be to take Ben up on his offer and let him buy me out.”
“Maybe.” Cam frowned, leaning forward on the steering wheel. “Though I can’t help wondering why he wants it—or whom he’s going to sell it to. I can’t see one redeeming element here.”
She let out a sigh. “Darn. I was hoping for a bit of good luck for a change.”
“Ya gotta make your own luck, sweetheart,” Cam said in his best Sam Spade imitation. “That’s the way the game is played.”
She made a face at him and admitted, “I don’t even see a place to have a picnic here. And we passed a nice park about thirty minutes ago. Shall we go back?”
The ride back wasn’t any better than the ride out had been, but they found their way to the nice park and sighed with relief when they got there. The park had tables with built-in benches and they set up their feast on a nice one under an oak, in full view of the small river that ran through the area. Rosa’s lunch was delicious. They ate and talked softly in the noon day sunshine. A group of children played tag a short distance away. Mothers with strollers passed, cooing to their babies.
Diana took a bite of her chicken salad sandwich as she watched the passing parade. “Funny how, once you’re pregnant, you suddenly notice all the babies that pop up everywhere.”
He gave her a covert look. She’d brought up her pregnancy on her own. Did this mean that the moratorium on mentioning it was lifted? Just in case, he made sure to tread softly.
“You’re going to make a great mom,” he noted.
She flashed him a look and for a moment, he thought he was going to get his head handed to him. But then her face softened and she almost smiled.
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
“I get a clear vibe from you that seems encouraging,” he said. “You seem to be settling into this new role you’re about to play in the world.”
Now a smile was definitely tugging at the corners of her mouth. “It’s funny, but it has taken me a while to fully realize what I’ve done, what I’m about to do. Mia seems very real to me now. I can hardly wait to hold her in my arms. I only hope I’ll be a good mother to her.”
“I have no doubts. I remember how you took care of your father.”
“Do you?” She looked at him in surprise, then with growing appreciation. “I don’t think most people remember that, or even noticed at the time.” She shook her head. She’d spent too much of her young life taking care of him and getting little thanks for it. But she’d done it out of duty and a feeling of compassion for the man. And though she’d gone off to the big city as soon as she could, to leave all that behind her, she’d come back when her father needed her and no one else would have taken care of him as he lay dying. So she did it.
Funny. She’d left Gold Dust because of her father and then she’d returned for the same reason.
“He needed someone to take care of him. It was a cinch he couldn’t take care of himself.”
He waved a carrot stick at her. “You were taking care of him when you were too young to be taking care of anything more than whether your socks matched.”
She smiled. Trust Cam to have paid attention and to have realized how difficult it was for her when she was young. How could you not fall for a guy like that?
She was quiet for a moment, then said softly, “I loved him, you know.”
He looked at her and saw the clouds in her eyes. He wanted to take her in his arms, but he held off, knowing how she felt about the situation.
“Of course you did. He was your father.” He shifted in his seat. “Did you ever know your mother at all?”
“Not much.” She shook her head. “She took off before I was six years old and never looked back.”
“That’s a shame.”
She tilted her head back and smoothed her hair off her face. “I’m not so sure. If she was worth knowing, she’d have made a point of letting me know her.” Her laugh was short and spiked with irony. “At least my father stuck around.”
They packed away the remnants of their lunch, put things into the car, and walked down to watch the river roll by. There were just enough boulders and flat rocks in the river’s path to make for a pretty spectacular water show. They followed the river for a bit, then sat on a large rock and listened to the rushing sound.
“You need something like this at your place,” he told her. “Your lake could use some shaking up.”
“I’ve got a nice stream,” she protested. “That’s more my sort of excitement. Something manageable and contained.”
He laughed, leaning back beside her and tossing a flat pebble into the river. “That’s all you want out of life, is it? Something manageable?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Not a thing.” He tossed another pebble. “But back about the time I left, I thought you had plans to go to the city and become a model.” He shifted so that she could lean back against his shoulder instead of the hard rock. “What happened to that?”
She hesitated, then gave in to temptation and let her body snuggle in against his. “Kid dreams,” she said airily.
He turned his head, savoring the feel of her against him. A sudden breeze tossed her hair against his face and he breathed in her spicy scent. “You would’ve been good,” he said, closing his eyes as he took in the sense of her.
“No.”
“Why not?” Opening his eyes again, he was almost indignant. “You’ve got the bones for it. You could be a model.” Reaching out, he touched her hair, then turned his hand, gathering up the strands like reins on a wonderful pony. “You…Diana, you’re beautiful.”
He said it as though it were the revelation of the ages. She smiled wryly, appreciating his passion but knowing it was just a bit biased.
“I’m not cut out for that sort of life,” she said simply.
“Chicken.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not that.”
He went very still for a moment, thinking over her situation. “Maybe you should have gone for it anyway,” he said softly.
She moved impatiently, turning to look at him. “You don’t understand. I know more about it than you think I do. I lived in San Francisco for a couple of years after college. I did all those things you do when you live in San Francisco. I went to parties in bay-view penthouses, danced in sleazy discos, dated young account executives and overworked law students. Climbed halfway to the stars in little cable cars. Lived on a houseboat in Sausalito for a few months. Worked at a boring job. Had my car broken into. Had my apartment robbed. Had a lot of fun but finally I’d had enough and I wanted to come home. To me cities are kind of those ‘great to visit but don’t make me live there’ sorts of places.”
He smiled, enjoying how caught up in her subject she’d become. Reaching up, he touched her cheek. “You’re just a small town girl at heart.”
“I guess so. I love it in Gold Dust.” She threw her head back, thinking of it. “I love to wake up in the morning and see the breeze ruffling the surface of the lake. I love the wind high up in the pines and the fresh smell after a rainstorm. I love that feeling of calm as the sun sinks behind the mountaintops and changes the atmosphere into a magic twilight.”
“I
understand,” he said. “That’s part of what pulled at me to come back.” He hesitated only a few beats. “That…and you.”
The moment he said it, he knew it was true. Through all the turmoil, all the hell he’d gone through with Gina, Diana had always been in the back of his mind, a calm, rational presence, an angel of mercy whose care could heal his soul. He’d always pushed the memories away, thinking they were a crutch he’d held on to in order to comfort himself, like a favorite fantasy. But now he knew it was much more. What he felt for Diana might be fairly hopeless, but it was real and true and strong inside him. It was more real than any other part of his life had ever been. His gaze slid over her, searching the shadowed areas along her neckline, her collarbone, the upper swell of her breasts.
She turned toward him slowly, as though in a dream. She knew he was going to kiss her. She heard it in his voice. Her heart was thumping so loud, she wasn’t sure if she could breathe. He was going to kiss her and once again, just for this moment, she was going to kiss him back.
She didn’t wait, but leaned toward him, her lips already parted, and his arms came around her and she clung to him, moving in a cloud of sensual happiness. Was this real? Was that really Cam’s body that felt so warm and wonderful against hers?
It was over too soon. She sighed as he pulled back, then smiled up at him.
“How can I miss you if you won’t go away?” she murmured, half-laughing.
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, touching her cheek with his forefinger.
“It means you’re always there,” she said, straightening and moving away from him. “You’re either in my life or in my dreams. I can’t get rid of you.” She said it lightly, as though teasing, but she meant every word.
He watched her through narrowed eyes, wondering why she appealed to him more than any other woman he’d ever known. Holding her felt natural, kissing her had been magic. He wanted her in his bed, in his life. But what did that signify? Right now, it was just confusing.
It was later, as they winged their way home, that he brought up the topic she’d been dreading all along.
“You haven’t been over to the house for a while.”
“No. I was gone and then…” She let her voice taper off because she knew there was no good excuse for her sending Penny to take care of the arrangements at the Van Kirk mansion one more time, even though she herself was back in town.
“My mother is asking that you come see her,” he said, glancing at her sideways.
“Oh, no,” Diana said, her eyes full of dread. “She’s going to beg me to take over the party plans, isn’t she?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Tell her I’ve got the flu.”
This time his look was on the scathing side. “I make it a practice never to lie to women,” he said, and she wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.
She smiled sadly just the same. “Only to men, huh?”
He suppressed a quick grin. “Of course. A man can handle a lie. Likely as not, he’ll appreciate a well-told one. Might even appropriate it for his own use in the future, and thank you for it, besides.”
“Unlike a woman,” she countered teasingly.
“Women only appreciate lies about themselves, and then only if they’re complimentary.”
She stared at him, struck by how serious he sounded all of a sudden. “What made you so cynical about the human race?” she asked him.
For just a moment he was tempted to tell her about Gina, the only other woman he’d been close to loving over the last ten years, about how she’d nearly pulled him into an ugly trap, teaching him a lesson about feminine lying he would never forget. But at the last moment, he decided it was a story best kept to himself and he passed over it. It was all very well to use episodes from the past as lessons in guarding one’s trust like a stingy uncle, but to inflict those stories on others was probably too much.
“Life does take its toll,” he said lightly instead.
“Are you done?” she asked.
He glanced at her in surprise. “Done doing what?”
“Done running around the world looking for affirmation.”
He gave a cough of laughter. “Is that what I’ve been doing? And here I thought I was looking for adventure all this time.”
She shrugged, loving the way his hair curled around his ear, loving the line of his profile, loving him in every way she possibly could. She’d missed him so. She would miss him again when he left. And she was sure his leaving was inevitable. She didn’t know when, but she knew he would go. And this time, she refused to let her heart break over it.
“Tell me why you went in the first place? The real reason.”
“You mean, beyond the fight with my grandfather? It’s pretty simple. The age-old story.” He maneuvered through a traffic circle in the little city they were passing through. “I had to go to see if I could make it on my own without the Van Kirk name boosting me along. I didn’t want to end up like my father. And I didn’t much want to end up like my grandfather, either. I wanted to be me.”
She nodded. That was pretty much what she’d expected. “And now?”
He grinned. “Now I’m thinking my grandfather isn’t such a bad model after all.”
“Interesting.” She thought about that for a moment, then went on. “Has anyone ever told you that a lot of people thought you left because of Lulu?” she informed him, watching for his reaction.
He looked blank. “Lulu?”
“Lulu. Lulu Borden. You remember her.” She hid her smile.
“Oh, sure. Tall, curvy girl. Lots of red hair. Nice smile. Kind of flirty.”
“That’s Lulu.”
He shrugged. “What does Lulu have to do with me?”
“Well…” She gave him an arch look. “She started showing right about the time you disappeared. A lot of people figured you were the one who got her that way. And that was why you took off.”
“What?” He gaped at her in horror until she reminded him to keep his eyes on the road. “If a lot of people thought that a lot of people were wrong.”
She nodded happily. “I was pretty sure of that, but it’s good to hear you confirm it.”
He frowned, still bothered by the charge against him. “What did Lulu have to say about it?”
“She married Tommy Hunsucker, so she’s not sayin’ much.”
“Geesh.” He shook his head with a look of infinite sadness. “Maligned in my own hometown.”
“Sure,” she said cheerfully. “Where better to have your reputation besmirched?”
“And now they think I’m a daddy again, don’t they?” he said cynically, looking at her growing tummy. “At least the town has a lot of faith in my potency.”
She grinned. “Legends speak louder than facts sometimes,” she admitted.
“Speaking of legends…” He hesitated, then went on bravely. “Tell me why you aren’t going to marry the father of your baby.”
All the humor drained from her face and she seemed to freeze. “That is not up for discussion.”
He turned to look at her. “Di…”
“No. I’m not going to tell you anything.” She shook her head emphatically and her tone was more than firm. “This is my baby. The father has nothing to do with it.”
He winced. “That’s not true.”
“It is true,” she insisted fiercely. “That’s it.” She held her hand up. “End of discussion.”
He didn’t press it any further, but he thought about it all the rest of the way home.
It was late afternoon before they turned onto the Gold Dust Road and came in sight of her little house by the lake.
“Getting back to the point,” he said as he pulled up before her gate. “Will you go to see my mother?”
“Wow, that was a subject I thought we’d left in the dust way back there somewhere. Or at least we should have.”
She thought for a moment before answering. She wanted to give him the benefit of the
doubt, an even chance, a fair hearing, and all those other tired clichés that meant he probably had a point to make and she ought to let him make it.
He moved impatiently. He obviously thought she’d taken enough time to come up with a fair decision and he was beginning to think she was dragging her feet.
“Listen, Di. I owe my mother something. I owe her quite a bit, in fact. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what life was about and what my place was in the general scheme of things. By the time I’d sorted it all out, I was back where I’d started. But by then, I realized family was more important than anything else. And I needed to make up for some things with mine. So that’s why I came back. Unfortunately they’re in more trouble than I can easily deal with. But this, at least, I can do for her. I can let her have her party. And she needs help to do it.”
Diana listened to him and agreed with just about everything he said. He was a good son after all. And she knew she could help. She sighed.
“All right, Cam. I’ll go to see your mother.” She shook her head. “But I can’t go tomorrow. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in the morning and I won’t be back in time.”
“Here in town?”
“No.” She looked at him speculatively, then amplified a bit. “I decided from the first that I’d better go to a clinic down in Sacramento. I found a good doctor there. And I didn’t want everyone in town knowing all about my pregnancy.”
He nodded. “Probably a wise move,” he said.
“So I’ll plan to come by and see her Friday,” she went on. “I’ll talk to her.” She winced. “But I’m afraid I’m only going to disappoint her.”
He grunted and she couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with her or dissenting.
“I still don’t feel comfortable being a part of the great wife search,” she told him, “especially if you plan to thwart your mother on it. If you really mean it, that you won’t marry anyone, I hope you’re planning to tell her the truth from the beginning.”
“She knows how I feel.”
“Does she?” Somehow, doubts lingered. “Cam, let’s be honest. Your mother is looking for a bride for you, like it or not. It’s not exactly fun for me to be a part of that.”
